Trashdome: El Grande vs Tigris And Euphrates

Am I allowed to say El Grande if I've only played T&E once?

RobertB wrote: Am I allowed to say El Grande if I've only played T&E once?

Yes!

Although you should be familiar with both games, there is no rule that says you have to have played both of them. The only rule in Trashdome is this;

Two games enter! One game leaves

Not to mention just scrapping your entire hand and starting fresh.

That's kind of an argument in favor of El Grande.

I don't want to lose my eyes, so I guess I'll go with T&E, but neither of them really excite me.

Another preference for E&T is the way it obscures who is in the lead. Not only are points hidden, but because the lowest of four is the score, it's really hard to tell who is actually in the lead.

El Grande's open scoring makes bashing on the leader a feature. There's nothing wrong with that, but it has a different feel.

I feel like my impression of El Grande has been changed because of the things that others have done with the design, as Jexik pointed out. It's a great game, but it feels like there was more that could've been done with it. Tigris & Euphrates, OTOH, still strikes me as singular. Like Gregarius said, there are so many possibilities within the scope of the design that, even though it's not my favorite Knizia and it's often a pain in the ass to teach people, it's still something I'll never part with because of the potential that's always there, in every game, to see something unusual happen. Plus, it's the game that really taught me that the old "flavorless, mechanical Euros" was a label that can't be applied to Knizia's works. T&E really does demonstrate the progression of ancient Sumerian society, albeit in a quite abstract manner.

T&E, FTW.

I've only played T&E once and it was the 2nd most painful gaming experience of my life. After playing T&E, my head felt like it was going to explode and blood was dripping out of my eyes. So T&E is one of the few games that I refuse to play ever again.
I've played El Grande many times there is always yelling and screaming but I've never had my head explode. I've always had a good time playing El Grande. If fact at game night last Wednesday at Malloc's house, a group of 5 guys played El Grande. I was at another table playing playing Destinies but it seemed like the El Grande table was enjoying playing the game.

My vote: El Grande

T&E for me, easy.
It's totally unique.
It's a great piece of thoughtfully thematic design. There's nothing wasted. Every rule is making a point about the time period/societal development. And yet there are so few rules.
Yes there's some luck, That improves it in my eyes. Hand management like that enables you to try and get your way out of it. And bluff, too.
It has real sudden turns of fortune due to those conflicts.
It is open. Such clean design. What I mean here is that it starts blank, bar the rivers. No strictures apart from a page worth of rules, no move things here, then you get to move them here, no text on cards to mull over the effects of. All this means that the possibility of unique outcomes, purely created by players, is high, keeping things interesting.

El Grande is good, great even, but it always felt too long for me, the same stuff repeated, the beats feeling the same, the counting of cubes to mathemitise it out.

El Grande: 6
Tigris & Euphrates: 7

It was a hard fought battle but ultimately El Grande was drowned in the mighty floodplains of the Tigris & Euphrates. It seems the audience has a preference for novelty over elegance; this must be the effect of that cult of the new I keep hearing about.

I loved hearing everyone's thoughts on these two greats; the comparison between seminal vs singular was not one I'd thought of in the context of these two games. Jexik's comment about Eric Lang riffing on El Grande was also not something I'd considered but after having it pointed out it is pretty clear! I hope to see you all at the next Trashdome!

Nicely run Trashdome Sornars.